James Grippando - A King's ransom

“A few good things, I hope.”

“Only good things. He’s very proud of you.”

“That’s nice to hear.”

“Come back to my office, where we can talk.”

Ignacio left us, and I followed Guillermo down yet another hallway. He was making small talk about Nicaragua, all the things I needed to see while I was here. The volcanoes, the big cathedral in Granada.

Guillermo was younger than I’d expected, or at least younger-looking. He was almost as tall as I was, a good six feet, which definitely wasn’t the norm among Nicaraguan men. His smile was as smooth as his walk, and those big, dark eyes would have served him well if he were a Latin singer of love songs. Now that we’d met, I was certain that he, and not my father, had hired all the pretty young girls out front.

“Good flight over?” he said as we entered his office.

“Fine.” I took the chair facing his desk. He went around to the other side. I opened my carry-on bag and dumped the box of pastries on his desk. “Here’s the goodies you asked for.”

“Ah, thank you so much. You know, it’s not that you can’t find guava and cream cheese in Managua. But you just can’t beat the Cuban bakeries in Miami.” He unwrapped one and gulped it down. “So how can I help you?” he said with a mouthful of goo.

I paused, not sure where to begin. It didn’t seem wise to jump into the FBI allegations about my father’s business partner less than five minutes after meeting him. “My mother and I are getting concerned about Lindsey.”

“In what way?”

“Granted, it’s not unusual for us to hear nothing from her for weeks, sometimes months. That’s the way she’s decided to live her life. But with Dad kidnapped, we’re starting to worry.”

“When did you last hear from her?”

“About two weeks before the kidnapping.”

He nodded, then reached for another pastry. “Not sure I can help you there.”

For the first time since the introductory hug, he’d finally stopped smiling. I said, “Last time she called, she was somewhere in Nicaragua. So I was thinking maybe. .”

“That I was hiding something?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to.”

He seemed too defensive. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m not here to accuse anyone of anything, least of all you.”

“I’m glad you feel that way. But why don’t we just clear the air right away? It’s over between me and Lindsey.”

The words hit me like ice water. “What do you mean, ‘over’?”

“Done. Finished. I know your father didn’t approve. Your mother probably didn’t even know.”

“Are you saying that you and Lindsey. .”

He arched an eyebrow. “You mean you didn’t know either?”

“I didn’t know anything.”

“I thought you came here to talk about Lindsey.”

“I did, but- What were you doing going out with my sister?”

He leaned back in his chair, seeming to look past me as he spoke. “It started a few months ago, maybe longer. We saw each other once every couple of weeks, then once a week. Pretty soon she was dropping by here pretty regularly, and people started to talk.”

“What did my father say?”

“In a nutshell: Keep your hands off my daughter. He had a million reasons. I’m too old for her, it’s bad for the business, he doesn’t want his daughter hanging around the office. .”

“You’re married,” I said, using my Earth-to-Guillermo tone of voice.

“Well, that, too.”

“So you broke it off?”

“Not exactly. She did. She said your father wouldn’t allow it.”

“Not to deflate your ego, Romeo, but if my father wouldn’t allow it, that would be all the more reason for Lindsey to keep right on seeing you.”

His wounded expression slowly gave way to a wry smile. “I know that. Hey, maybe I was too old for her.”

“Or too married.”

“Jeez, you’re really fixated on that.”

“Must be a faulty synapse or something. Marriage. Fidelity. Not sure why those concepts are linked in my brain.”

“Okay, I get your point. You’re the big brother, and I understand how this is touchy for you. But the bottom line is, I haven’t seen your sister in at least a month.”

His phone rang. He excused himself, picked it up, and grunted a few clipped “Uh-huh”s to whoever was on the other end of the line. He hung up and said, “Sorry to break this off, Nick, but I have to meet a customer. How about dinner tonight?”

“Sure.”

He walked me to the door. “I’m sorry about this Lindsey situation. Didn’t mean to drop a bomb on you.”

“Hey, Lindsey’s always been a box of surprises.”

“Surprises aren’t good. I always say it’s best to get things out in the open. So tonight I’ll treat you to some Flor de Cana, best rum in Central America. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”

“Deal.”

“Call me around seven,” he said, then closed the office door.

My smile faded as I headed down the hall, past the chapel, wondering if there was enough rum in all of Nicaragua to get Guillermo talking about the ten million dollars the FBI seemed to think he was worth.

Matthew had expected some form of punishment. But not this.

After the death of Nisho’s husband, it had been straight to solitary confinement for Matthew. Not in a thatched hut or wooden shack, like the one in the FARC camp where he’d met Emilio. This was five days in a hole in the ground. It was deep enough for him to sit upright but not stand. He could lie on his side in the fetal position, but there was no room to stretch out to his full length. The roof overhead was at ground level, made of chopped branches, wide jungle leaves, and thick mosses. It kept out the daylight but not the steady mountain rainfall. In a matter of hours the sides and bottom of his pit were nothing but slimy mud. Last night it had rained hard, and today the chilly water was up to his ankles, as the ground was too saturated for it to drain away.

Matthew still couldn’t erase the sight of that man sprawled on the rocks beside the river. Joaquin had left him there, of course, no proper burial. All the way back from the tragic sight, Matthew had protested his innocence. Nisho, the new widow, hadn’t seen anything, so she couldn’t say whether Matthew or Jan was lying. Joaquin didn’t have time to sort out the truth. Immediately upon their return to camp, Joaquin ordered his men to start digging. Matthew was thrown in one hole, and Jan went in another one twenty yards away. Better to punish the innocent than to risk letting a guilty man go free. Justice according to Joaquin.

Matthew tried to think of Cathy, his family-anything to take his mind away from this place. He recounted fishing trips he’d taken, bonefish in the Bahamas, peacock bass in Venezuela. That only brought to mind the ancient fisherman’s motto-“Allah does not subtract from the allotted time of man the hours spent fishing.” He wondered about the hours spent kidnapped, knee-deep in mud in a dark hole in the earth.

He suddenly cringed. There it was again, that sharp pain in his belly. It had first come upon him two days ago after lunch, a violent episode. Ironically, he’d thought the guards had acted out of kindness in allowing him to eat in daylight with the roof pulled back. Turned out they merely wanted to watch the show. Within ten minutes of finishing his cornmeal, he was doubled over in pain. The vomiting and diarrhea were utterly uncontrollable. He couldn’t even climb out of his hole, and the guards wouldn’t lift him out. They only laughed, and he knew that they’d slipped him something to make him so sick.

It was back again, the same stabbing sensation in his lower abdomen.